The person who sent it to me was an abusive person who had hurled anger at me that was entirely inappropriate. In an attempt to understand, forgive, heal, and carry on, I had actually prolonged keeping someone in my life that did harm me and had the potential to harm me worse. The values I had held to most of my life were in place and being tested... I had not come to that conclusion yet.
Book burning. Images of piles of books - a bonfire heaped upon. Book burners believe that the publication has the potential to sway other people to an ideology that they think of as wrong. They think others should be spared and defended from the books. And books, Bible especially, are used to sway, to manipulate, to convert. Much has to do with you, the reader, your attitude, your desire to read about subjects, but also around them. To consider. To debate. To be well informed.
You are not necessarily what you read. What you read can turn you into the opposition.
I asked myself if I had ever burned a single book, or otherwise destroyed a book or any publication, because I didn't want anyone else to be exposed to what was written within.
How about when I was a kid?
I couldn't think of any books I burned or destroyed. It was my tendency to donate books I didn't want to keep, or pass them along. I was also excellent about respecting libraries and returning books on time. Sometimes out of boredom I picked up a book at a garage sale or that a friend suggested and was terrifically surprised or pleased because I otherwise might never have read it. I was and am bookish. For years I preferred reading over watching television and did not even own a television. I'm the ideal person to have achieved a BA in Literature.
Before I started listening to audiobooks, which has been the last few years, I had a healthy visual reading habit that meant borrowing hundreds of books from libraries over the years. There were also magazines that I read regularly or frequently.
Over the years my interests changed when it came to reading. Most significantly, I began to read memoirs and non-fiction. I read books and other publications to research niches of history, society, and culture. I was not reading fiction (even as I write fiction). I found it to be true when it came to film too, that I would rather watch a bio-pic, knowing that the screenwriter and filmmaker have to take a stance and cannot show us the past or every character perfectly right or to please everyone. (The Crown being a good example.) I think there is an agreement that this is so, that a two hour film or a five hundred page book or even years of research might not get it right - but one tries. Every reader, every viewer of visual representations, every watcher of film, is participatory in a communication, taking it in, thinking and experiencing and feeling and deciding. If a film is made of a book, I may see the film and read he book - usually the book is better.
I love books.
But I had burned someone's letter, a letter than came out of pondering and a need to vent. A dark letter that reminds one of the George Harrison song, Beware of Darkness, that goes,
Watch out now, take care
Beware of thoughts that linger
Winding up inside your headI met the character I'll call Ray when I stopped in at shop a friend and his family owned. I was in the neighborhood and thought to say hello, but my friend was clearly too busy to talk right away. Ray was also there waiting to talk to him, as a customer. So Ray and I small talked for a few minutes before he advanced to the desk and I waved hello and left. I was suited up and feeling optimistic. I said I was in the neighborhood looking for work and had just had an interview. He gave me his business card and it said he was a designer. (He was not. But he was in the process of working with one. It was probably a ploy to get wholesale pricing.) A couple weeks later, I did that thing called networking. I called him and did my spiel thinking he might be hiring. Some time after that he called me, a little too late at night, so I didn't stay on long, just enough to arrange to meet for coffee. Since most designers I met who were male were gay, I thought that without conviction. Ray lived on the other side of town and we decided to meet up for coffee when he was on my side. From then on, for about six months or so, it seemed Ray and I were companionable and having a good time. We took a hike in Angeles Crest forest and brought along art supplies to do some sketching. We looked for inexpensive restaurant lunches on weekends and events around town. He was gentlemanly. He was not gay.
However, there were some things that happened during that time, before he sent me the nasty letter, that today I would consider proof that a person is not well psychologically.
We decided to have lunch at a restaurant that he was familiar with. It was clear the place was understaffed and the waitress who showed up at our table did quickly say that in a bid for our understanding before she took the order. It was a bright and sunny day, not too hot or cold, a nice breeze. The food was good for the money. We had not made any special demands. I have empathy for wait staff because I know that this is something that I could never do well. I've only gotten upset with one waitress in my lifetime and that was because, after my party had spent easily $150 bucks (probably at least $200 today) she refused to serve me a glass of wine after the meal. The place was not supposed to close for another half hour and no one wanted to leave yet. I'm sure what was going on was that she did not want to open another bottle to sell one glass. I asserted myself but was not abusive. I got my glass of wine and we still left a good tip.
It seemed to be an overall pleasant situation there at lunch with Ray. Other than that we had waited about twenty minutes to order and about twenty minutes for our food. We were in no rush. However, when the waitress brought us our bill, Ray went ballistic over the fact that the tip had been added on - presumed. He not only wrote a nasty note on the receipt but when she came over to talk to us, he was bad enough to upset the waitress. I reasoned with him, he calmed down, we left and nothing more was said about it.
Then, there was the time when I had an interview fairly close to where Ray lived, so I called him and asked him if he would like me to stop over before heading home. When I got there and parked my car at the curb, in a space that was in front of his neighbor's house, and got out and started up the steps, the neighbor came out. She was in fact drunk. There was the strong smell of what was probably on the rocks hitting me like the breath out of a dragon. Her footing was unstable on the flat lawn. She came over to warn me, "Ray," she said, rolling her eyes up at me, "Oh does he have a bad temper." I said, "Really?" But she was drunk.
One afternoon when I was at Ray's the doorbell rang, he went to the door, and then he slammed the door enough to shake the house. Apparently his neighborhood was rife with real-estate agents, one after another, who wanted to introduce themselves and leave their cards, and it was all too much. Ray had lived in apartments for years and it was the first house he had owned and lived in since leaving his parents home years before. An inheritance had made the house possible and it was in a desirable neighborhood. A No Soliciting sign might have been helpful.
Still, months had gone by in which Ray had not shown any anger towards me. If I had any complaint it was that it was clear that his other friends were snobs. It turned out that the day I met him in the shop he had been there to place an order for some items that had been suggested by a "designer friend" of his that he was paying to tweak the house. He was not dating this woman, who had no education in design, though that's not uncommon, but she was the kind of snob who grilled me - someone she was just meeting - about my heritage and money. Who asks someone they just met such questions?
An ex debutant who is divorced!
She was from the South, something about Louisiana maybe, something about oil. I was prepared to be nice but ended up privately thinking of her as "that woman who fucks oil wells." When I had the misfortune to meet her at what was supposed to be a friendly lunch, and she behaved so badly, I got the impression she actually had designs on Ray and considered me to be some kind of competition.
Later he admitted that he had once dated someone who "the woman who fucks oil wells" did not like, and that woman had said the same thing I did, that she had that impression. Get a clue Ray, she was looking for a husband, one with more money then you ever had... Meanwhile I couldn't see what improvements might have been made to the decor of his house. Ray had invested in an alarm system that would lock him in his bedroom if there was an in-home robbery while he slept and some patio furniture.
More of a problem really was when his best male friend showed up one day as we were heading out, while he was in the neighborhood. It was an unexpected visit and suddenly, being the female in the room, we cancelled our plans and it was put upon me to come up with a tasty lunch for the us three, to basically put this male friend of Ray's as a priority. It felt wifey to me which I didn't like but people have to eat, so I did my best with what Ray had in his fridge. His friend left soon after we ate. It turned out the man was also checking me out, and well, he did not think of me as servile enough.
What bullshit you say? I know.
Now, the day I got the nasty letter, the first and only letter that Ray sent, reading it put me into a state of shock, yet I knew that it made no sense, that this could not be the Ray I had come to know. I felt as if I had been physically stabbed in the gut. I bent over the table. I was wounded. Then I got up and took a long bath. Then I called my best girl-friend and told her what happened. She told me to come over right away. She actually prayed for me in their backyard. She said, that when I brought him to a party at her house that summer, she could "see" that he there was a possibility he was an angry man. I didn't ask why she'd thought so or why she hadn't clued me in. I recalled that I had actually lost one contact lens while getting ready to go and had decided to go sans eye glasses which meant I was very myopic and a little dependent on Ray, though we just sat there on a sofa. He had not said or done anything angry on the way there or while we were there. He had not been unfriendly to her other guests... How had she gotten that impression?
Wasn't he a good guy?
Ray "looked good on paper." He already had a Masters degree and was a teacher. He had been the child who care-gave parents and then, when they went into assisted living and nursing homes, spent his days working and his evenings visiting with them. That had gone on for years, and he said that it made it difficult to also have romantic relationships. Also, he said he had once dated someone for seven years but they had gone to couple's counseling and had decided not to marry and ended their relationship. He was intelligent and educated, had been a dutiful and loving son, and was familiar with therapy. He told me he had been thinking about going back to school to become a therapist himself. (The beginnings of my attitude that most people I've met who do degrees in psychology or become therapists have screwy lives themselves and you might be better off going to Confession.) Also, there had been an episode of European travel in his past and he was thinking that he might want to do the tour again, as well as visit some of the people he had met long ago who lived there. I had nothing to say about his future plans. It was his life.
And yet, there I was, blindsided.
Back in the day, letters were to be responded to.
When I finally called Ray, I didn't bother to defend myself from any of the nonsense in the letter. It didn't occur to me that understanding or forgiveness was wrong. I said that based on a good six months I was prepared to just forget he ever sent it if that was where he was at too. I used the words "One more chance." He seemed to be relieved. And then I took my wok out onto my porch, threw the letter in there and set a match to it. I told him I burned the letter - never to be read again.
Thanksgiving came and Ray had no invitations. It happens when you're single and no longer have any family. What had happened to these two friends of his that I had met who held so much judgement of me as not good enough, not rich enough, not elite enough, not servile enough? I invited him along with me to spend Thanksgiving with me at some friends of mine I hadn't seen in a while who were OK about having a stranger at their table that year. I knew that I was risking that they would make way too much out of the fact that I had a man friend, that they might want to make it into a hot romance, even something serious, but well... We went and again he was a polite guest.
It was on the drive home, half way there, that, as they say, the screw turned. Ray announced as if he had been keeping a secret, that he was going to Vegas the next day with his male friend I had met, the friend's girlfriend and a friend of hers, also Filipino, who they had set him up with, for a few days.
His friend's girlfriend? We had stopped at their place one time one day when we went up to Ventura to some beach event. The man's girlfriend was live-in and didn't work for her living elsewhere. She was a mistress who was free to travel with him, probably hoping someday for marriage. She had been a mistress before. He'd had other women living with him - a series of them. She was the kind of woman who lives entirely to meet a man's every need, who you could imagine running his bathwater and putting a thermometer in to make sure it was the exactly right temperature for him. She was not unlikeable and neither was I, but when we went to a salad bar, she ran up to make her man's plate, knowing exactly how many croutons.
I was not like that.
I got my own food at the salad bar. Ray got his.
I'd told Ray that it would be unfair if there would be any expectation upon me to be like that by anyone. I was not a mistress. I was not a live in girlfriend, free to travel. I was not likely going to live unmarried with any man. I had to support myself.
And it had started out that I was networking for work, and having not been offered the best job, I took what I could get. My girlfriend said that was an honorable thing to do. I thought so too.
Apparently I was not rich enough to afford spending on Ray, to gift him more expensive things for his birthday than the sweater I ordered for him from Land's End, or the paella lunch with wine that I had produced - with some veggies from my girlfriend's organic backyard garden, or the tickets to the Dodgers game. (If this sounds uber generous, Ray had picked up the tabs at restaurants, so to me it was only fair.)
My girlfriend, she who had prayed for me, and who had included us in her summer party, and who had given me the garden veggies, decided she hated Ray - though she was careful with the words she used.
As well, there was an older woman, a neighbor in her 70's who still worked, and who I sometimes talked with and was friendly with. Upon hearing about his Vegas venture, she not only told me, with disgust, that he was no good, but she told the neighbors. She was less careful of her words. She said he was the kind of man who went with sluts and I didn't need him as a friend!
I didn't go that far in my thinking.
You see, for me, it was the attitude he had when he told me he was heading for Vegas and his timing. There had been some triumph in his voice when he announced his Vegas trip which most likely did not include separate rooms for him and the woman invited along for the fun. Some "I could have sat alone for Thanksgiving but for you taking sympathy upon me and you're not invited to Vegas."
But then I've never been to Vegas and never thought I was missing out on anything by having never been to Vegas.
I'd had enough of Ray.
I told Ray I hoped he had a wonderful time in Vegas and not to call me when he got back.
I felt a bit down over the whole episode, of having been deluded. I'd taken a part time job that was beneath me, and he had expressed concern that I would wreck my fingernails. Fingernails? Between unemployment benefits and my part time pay, I was able to pay my rent and my car insurance. The holidays were coming. The hustle bustle of the store (a company that's circa 2023 going out of business after a long run of underpaying employees, putting more and more work upon them, and cheating injured workers in workman's comp cases, such as my immediate boss there). At the time some cute young studly department managers who had smiles and laughs, made all the difference. I was ready for the new year and new people.
Then, it might have been February, maybe March, my phone rang. It was Ray. He was slurring. He had never been drunk and he had never used illegal drugs and he had not been on any prescriptions. Not Ray.
He got out the story that he'd had a brain stroke, a bleed, and had been in a coma and almost died. His male friend, the one who had gotten him a date for Vegas a few months earlier, had told him that I had come and sat there in the hospital while he lay in a coma! That was an outright lie. I wasn't aware of what happened when it happened. If any woman came and sat with him as he lay in a coma, it had to have been some other woman. I would deal with the liar another time. I listened and I felt sorry for him but I told him, "It wasn't me." To which, he made no comment.
I could only imagine him going into a rage about something and then having the brain stroke, though, it can happen as someone is sleeping. Still, I wondered if having this medical issue did have something to do with his anger or anger management. Despite some advantages, for there are many children who do right by their parents and self sacrifice who never get an inheritance or a house, Ray had clearly felt he was owed better than he'd gotten out of life. And that was the thematic of his nasty letter, except in it he'd had higher expectations of me. Any past therapy - couples or otherwise - had not rid him of a sense of entitlement. He - and perhaps his friends - had Narcissistic Personality Disorders.
I was not the person who owed him. Or could make it all up to him.
Then, and maybe this will shock you as it did me, Ray said that his insurance had put him in a rehab very far from home. And he wanted to go home. And they would not let him go home because he was not married, did not have a wife waiting to take care of him at home. Without siblings, he had no one. And he had told them at the rehab, that he could go home and I would be there to take care of him!
He had clearly lost some memory.
Who did he think I had been to him? This put me into a state of confusion.
After I got off the phone with Ray, I called the rehab and asked to speak to someone about his case. They put me on with a man who was assigned to him,a nurse or physical therapist. I doubt this would happen today. Today they would not tell me anything because I'm not family. First I confirmed that he was really there and that he'd had a brain stroke - that he had told me the truth. Then I told the man what Ray had said to me. I told the man that any relationship with Ray was long over and that I was in no way going to take care of him if he was released to go home. I told him I thought Ray had suffered memory loss about our relationship as a result of the stroke. The man became sober. I guess he'd believed Ray.
I sent Ray a get-well card, wishing him well.
I sent his liar friend a letter and told him I had not been there sitting with Ray in the hospital while he was in a coma and that he had to straighten that out with him. I mentioned that Ray had told me he had plans to go back to college to get a Masters in Psychology and travel in Europe. He'd had plans that never included me. I said we had moved on.
And I let it go.
Or so I thought.
I have no idea when Ray was released to go home, or how long it had been before he called me. He called. Sadly, because of his slur, he'd been fired from his teaching job. They said the students could not understand him. And also that he was not allowed to drive.
I felt for him. I really did. But...
I did not call him.
And he started calling me.
I got a full time job and stopped working the part time one. At some point I became aware that he was calling and hanging up because I was not answering. I was not answering mostly because I was not home but once I realized the hang up calls were from him, as the phone number came up, I didn't want to answer. He was obsessed. He become a bit of a stalker.
A package arrived one day, from Ray. Apparently I'd left a paperback in his car, which I'd forgotten about. From this experience I was known to tell people, "Don't go looking for bobby pins in the carpet." In other words, don't look for any little thing to reconnect with someone you were in any type of relationship with, when it ended badly. If there is something you left behind or need, get it, then go. The next time a package arrived from Ray, I told the mailman I needed to Return To Sender it.
Ray got his drivers license and bought a new car. Though he still lived across town, he was seen driving past my building a few times in an animated way, as if he were proving how well he was doing and how great he had it. It was probably an attempt to show off to me.
It was pathetic and desperate. And it hid the fact that while, at the time, I was open to anything so long as it was right, Ray and his friends did have an agenda to get him married to someone but not just anyone. They didn't want any women friends in his life. Until his disability somehow made it OK for him to consider me as a care-giver, who no doubt would be supremely giving and unselfish.
I was not afraid of Ray and never thought to involve the police.
It must have been near a year or maybe more when I spontaneously decided to answer the phone when Ray called. By then he had probably called a few hundred times. I felt ready.
I heard myself say, "My heart is elsewhere now." It was a lie but a simple and necessary one.
He said, "I thought of that."
I also told him I thought he needed psychological help. He admitted he had thought of that too.
The phone calling stopped.
Around 2008 I and another friend got a picnic together and decided to go over to an area of Griffith Park not too far from the zoo to eat. There was event there and from about fifty feet away I saw that Ray was there with a group of friends. I suggested we find another place to have our sandwiches and left.
At some point I decided to find out if Ray was still alive.
He wasn't.
I have a theory about the life-review after-death experiences that some people have been reporting. In truth, what they're reporting is an experience that humans go through before the brain and other bodily systems are totally shut down. There is now evidence that there may be consciousness for some time after bodily death. I.e. You know you are dead, even after your head was chopped off. Maybe we are rigged that way but then, after the tunnel of light and meeting with the previously deceased including our pet dogs, maybe there is a point where there is nothing rather than eternal life. I haven't heard any such stories from people who were actually "dead" for longer than a few minutes. Are these glimpses into another reality?
Forgiveness is almost always part of the story these people tell.
I think forgiveness is overrated.
James van Praagh, one of the premier psychic mediums, says we get to feel every pain and every joy that we caused others while we were alive, that is our punishment or reward, as well as eventually coming up with the next-life plan in which we are to learn more lessons.
I wonder if Ray got a dose.
C 2023 Christine Trzyna
P.S. I do believe some people, sometimes, can retrieve a friendship once some time has passed. Opinions do change at times, and sometimes this is wisdom.
And that letters, written to further understanding, can open communications.
And that it can be important to listen and allow another person to say what they need to say.
***
Slightly edited last fifth of this tome on May 2, 2023. A little punctuation, etc, for clarity.
He said he only wanted to text and was unresponsive to e-mails.
She said e-mail was her favorite way of communicating.
I said that I prefer to talk on the phone but can only do that after dinner (and kitchen clean up) for about an hour total. (Long ago, after a few marathon phone calls that were actually visits, as I put the phone on speaker and kept doing the housework, I gave up on long phone call visits.)
He only wanted to talk late at night.
She did not want to leave the house to get together.
I sat there, hitting individual letters of the alphabet on the phone to stay in touch, swearing up a storm as autocomplete changed words and meanings, so that I had to reread it before sending, and even then. This was not something I would usually have the time to do, but considering that so many places to go and things to do were shut down, I put in the effort.
It was for them and for me. To keep the friendships, to reach out during a period in history when we were forced to isolate.
He said he got vaccinated right away and then with another friend took a long road trip to the American South, as if he wouldn't catch Covid in his own car, traveling the roads, checking into motels. He was out of touch and stayed that way.
She said wearing masks was not healthy for you and vaccinations would kill you.
Vacations versus vaccinations...
In the last four years we have gotten together at an outdoor restaurant one time - unmasked. I'm sure we both looked different to each other by then.
"You got your hair cut!"
"It's too short!"
He showed up, as he had before, not long before another trip, to see if I could dog sit for cheap. He didn't say those words but I knew that was why he was on the porch, as it was his pattern. I said I'd met a woman who ran a doggie motel out of her own beautiful home and all the dogs there looked happy. (Last time I doggie sat for him he left me no food in the fridge, I got no cell reception, couldn't get the Netfix/Amazon to work, and there was a hole in the back fence which one of the dogs escaped out of.)
He said, "You're looking good," and left - forever.
As her e-mails came in after that meet up, I began to think that she was actually some sort of - not terrorist - not activist - but radical with a pledge to stay alone and be alone. Then I began to think that maybe she was actually not well mentally. Was this one more "friendship" in which I had given a person more credit than they deserved? Had she always been this way or was it acclimating to Covid, fear and paranoia, that had caused her to be so isolating?
In the past, when I was in a creative flow and/or working on a project, I was capable of making time and space work for me fairly well. My record for purposely going incognito while working on a writing project (I typed from waking until sleep again) was about three weeks. No interruptions via people or electronics allowed. If I remember correctly, I pre-stocked the kitchen so I wouldn't have to go to the market. I stayed in flow.
But while I could purposefully isolate in order to get work done, I was also good at getting out there to a coffee house, or walking my dog. If I needed to take a break I could go where it was easy to talk to strangers.
The issue with the e-mail: this is where being a writer and rereading old messages was important. Was it that I had not SAID, or was it that she was not UNDERSTANDING what I said?
Communication is always two ways. You have to be sure that the person or persons you're communicating to understand what you just said (or wrote) as you intended it. By rereading the e-mail messages I had sent, I'd made it clear that I was for Food Justice while she was for Food as Medicine. I reread and realized the problem. I'm concerned about Food for Everyone while she was for Food for Herself (and her friends who could afford organic) in order to prevent illness and death. What restaurants she was willing to eat at also had to do with food quality.
In the scheme of things this is an eccentricity that should be accepted, because when it comes right down to it, she's a good person.
This reminded me of years ago when a friend made in high school who rarely kept in touch came to town for a couple days to go to a convention. I cleared my schedule for half a day and got her in my car and took her for a ride through the mountains to the beach, which is off the tourist trail and had been a thrilling experience for other visitors but did not seem to impress her.
Then we sat down at a table and looked at each other and all the conversations we never had came down to a few to-the-point blurts.
"Does it bother YOU that you never had children?"
"Me neither!"
We then went on to such a brief mention of the circumstances of someone we both knew from back in the day, someone who had a couple of out of control spoiled brats. All she said was the woman's NAME!
"There's alcohol involved." I blurted.
She nodded slightly, as if we were both still being faithful to the old friend, who had seemed unable to cope with her marriage and her children and that this micro-second exchange was not gossip.
Though neither of us had kept in touch, though we had not made phone calls or texted or e-mailed, we communicated.
It helped that we could look each other in the eye.
And truly, phoning with an intent to catch up is good for long distance, but locally should be used only for arranging meet ups. Because in-person communication is the very best. One catches the facial expressions, the demeanor, the tone of voice. My sense of humor does not always come across otherwise.
More recently, I told my e-mail correspondent in advance that I was working on a project, what the project was, and so on. I told her it was important to me. She had suggested we get together for lunch weeks earlier and I'd agreed, and she had put it off. I also told her I would be spending most of my days at the library (where she could find me, on the laptop, phone off.) I sent her a message mid-project saying "I haven't forgotten about you."
I opened that e-mail once after my brief assurance, and saw two messages from her that had headlines about organic food. I didn't open them. I felt hammered by her with warnings about food that isn't organic, just when my stomach was rumbling and what I lusted after was a hot dog with lots of gooey toppings from the nearby 7/11 and bags of potato chips.
I finished the project and opened the e-mail. There was a message from her that said, "I wanted to get together for lunch, but I guess you aren't interested. That's all right."
I got mad. I had said in advance that I had a project and it was important to me and I was devoting myself to meeting a deadline. Instead she seemed to be taking personal offense.
So this morning I found an article on psychology professional approved messages one can use to text to a friend that you don't want to be friends any more. (The psychology professions had their names included.)
I hated that article.
I don't believe in blowing anyone off who has been a friend (OK, a 'real' friend) by texting or ghosting, or not communicating first that there's a problem that needs to be talked about, and worked out.
When you do not do that, when you devalue the other person to the point where they are not even owed a conversation, an opportunity to explain, or do better, or admit they cannot change to suit you, I think that has to do with you're own shitty values.
There wasn't a single suggestion in that article that I would use on my e-mail friend.
So after I post this, I'm going to sit down and devote hours to figuring out what I need to say, what I must say, to communicate with her.
"I feel I have made a good effort for the last few years to stay in communication with you. I have valued your friendship...
C 2022 Christine Trzyna
Having found her body around 5:30, I called the nearest city shelter, around 6. The shelter is part of the system in which I had adopted her and licensed her and been forced to give her yet another rabies vaccination against my better judgement, but in order to legally keep her. It was a number I had for some time. A neighbor had told me that I could take her there to the shelter but as it turned out, the place that offered 24 hour phone service had a recording that they were not open so it was after hours. Maybe this is still Covid crap.
One of the women in the back house told me I should to go to the corner store for a bag of ice and we would put my dog's body on this ice. She talked using a picnic cooler. All I could think of was my dog bleeding out into a borrowed picnic cooler and her body being frozen solid instead of going through rigor mortis.
I said I was sure there was a 24 hour number to call and got on the Internet. It turned out that body pick up is the Department of Sanitation. We scheduled a pick up but were told that there was a 24 hour window and I should put her body in a plastic bag and then in a box, and PUT HER ON THE CURB. i.e. like garbage. However, I recalled someone telling me long ago about their dog being taken away by a man who had shown compassion by this service.
If I had decided to give my beloved dog the death shot, her body to the crematorium would have been paid for and handled by the vet. Without a yard to bury her in - one more illegal thing in the county anyway - I had to have her body removed. It was too late for anything else and I had no choice.
There was a chance in hell I was going to put her on the curb like garbage, unattended. and contemplated being out there all night to keep away raccoons, wandering big dogs, maybe coyotes, and worse, insects who wanted to chomp.
Please God, let her body go unviolated.
So back to the bath tub.
The woman from the back house got on the phone and asked if reasonably it would be morning and they said yes.
After my dog had laid on her bed dead in the tub for about an hour or so, I took a picture of her, just for me. I looked at it later and apparently was shaking too bad to take a good picture. I know this may be morbid but I thought about humans who used to do this "last picture" as a last memory, which was private, and how awful it had been years ago when the National Enquirer violated Elvis's privacy in death by running a photo of him in his coffin.
I decided to go ahead and have some tea and make myself a quick dinner. It was luke warm black tea and not great tuna and macaroni and cheese, but I thought I would do next what I had to do, if I took care of myself by eating.
Although there had been dogs - other people's dogs - in my childhood, I had never dealt with a dead dog before. My first pet, a goldfish, found dead, got flushed down the toilet, and my hamster I put in a cigar box along with some flowers and gave a Hindu cremation in the lot behind my childhood home.
When I went back in to see my dog in the tub on her bed, I noticed that her tail, that had been curved along her backside when I found her, was now sticking strait out and back. I have since been a bit obsessed with figuring about when she died and if the notion that I should go home early and see her was psychic. I saw that a few tiny flees were decamping. I had bathed her in a new shampoo with aloe and chamomile the morning of the day before the day she died. So her fairly clean and groomed body was completing the process of rigor mortis and cooling on its own. Fleas abandon a body that is not warm. I brushed them away from her hair and have no idea where they went.
I had on hand this large empty white cardboard file box for some time, which I thought I was going to use when I went through smaller boxes of paperwork. I realized it had been sitting there to be used as a cardboard casket.
I walked to the closest store, where I told strangers in line my dog had just died, and bought what I thought was a five dollar bag of white plastic bags and later realized I had paid $8 for. Plastic; it has its uses. I chose the garbage compactor type, which turned out to be the best choice due to its blocky size. At least it was white and thick enough to not rip or tear and did not look like the black you throw yard refuse and leaves in. It was also thin enough to see that she was in there. I wondered if her spirit was around to see me come into the house, bend to find her, touch her, to carry her on her bed to the tub, and now -
Although she probably could have lain exposed longer, I became more concerned that flies might find her. There had been some in the house over the last few days. While bending over the tub, I was able to pull one plastic bag up and another down over her, not smothering or harshly tight on her body and bed, not that she needed air to breath, but her body did. With her tail adding a new dimension as it now seemed even more stiffly away from her body, this package all fit perfectly in the big white cardboard file box, which now rested on the bathroom floor.
I got out a green marker and I wrote her name in big letters on the top of the box and drew a heart. I wrote the number for pick up. I wrote her birth and death date, and "A loved and loving maltese-poodle."
I never opened the lid to look in after that. Closed casket. Privacy in death?
I tried to sleep but it was impossible. My heart raced. I worried more about insects crawling in from the floors. I told myself I dare not sleep in, or the pick up would pass us by. I wrote e-mails to some friends, full of anguish. At maybe 3 or 4 in the morning I 'slept' for an hour. At quarter to six as the dawn rose, I took a chair outside and then brought my little girl out. Two trees out there that have been suffering from drought, shaded over, lots of insects in the morning soil, at least there was a cement area to set her down on. I started crying to myself again.
Some dog walkers were going by. I tried to warn them that I had a dead dog in a box.
All a couple people wanted to know was "What time are they coming to pick her up?" I said, "Probably sometime this morning but they have till 6 tonight. It's OK, I've waited longer for car repairs."
"I can't just leave her out here."
"No you can't."
I tried to read. I ran in for some instant hot coffee and got a warmer jacket. I felt a little drizzle or wet dew coming down off the tree leaves and put plastic over the top of the box. Don't rain just yet.
Sitting with a body in death is what people used to do, before funeral homes had come and go visitation hours. I hate funerals and the whole funeral home scene. I've read "An American Way of Death." I think the funeral business is a greedy one, the cost of funerals and burials out of reason.
I remembered this news. When Mick Jagger's long term companion, L'Wren Scott, commit suicide, a woman who was six-foot-three barefoot, 'hung' from a doorknob with a scarf, her friend the actress Ellen Barkin came and sat with her body, and though of course I never met or knew either person, and had not known anything about her or that she was Jagger's long term companion, I felt profound respect for Ellen Barkin. She had not avoided that scene. What a friend she had been to L'Wren.
Not that my dog's death had anything in common with L'Wren's.
My neighbor with his dog, my dog's buddy, walked by and his dog, from a few feet away, looked towards the box, and took a deep obvious inhale. Did she smell only death or know my particular dog was dead in there? What had happened overnight under that plastic? One article I read on the net suggested that within hours a dog waiting for pick up could stink up an entire house. I smelled nothing lingering in the air of the bathroom, nor outside. It had been fairly cool and was that morning.
At nine thirty I finally saw a man in a green truck, an old man who I imagine had a part time gig doing this, and when I saw him I burst out in tears. "I found her dead when I got home," I sobbed. I knew this old guy was small but tough. He's the one who gets calls about dogs who got killed by cars, some who have no ID, and has to look at that mess. "I'm sorry," I said, "You must have the worst job in the world, having to pick up dead dogs."
"It can be difficult at times," he said. Then he looked at my box, and all I had written, and I saw it, he knew my dog was a loved one. He stopped for a moment, a seconds long affirmation, and then he picked her up and took her to the truck. What I had written on her cardboard casket had humanized her, I think. And then as this was my last good-by, I thanked him. Then a new thought came to me, that on the other end, maybe someone else with gloves would have to take her out. And maybe then the respect for my beloved animal friend would be over.
I started thinking about cremation of humans, how the cheapest services picked a dead person up quickly and they were on fire within hours. You had to pay more to have a dead human lay somewhere for three days, which many a tradition believes is how long the human soul lurks around, sometimes not knowing they are dead. Soon my dog would be a puff of smoke over in Long Beach maybe and probably on a pile of dead animals.
I knew I should sleep but I couldn't.
I did dishes. I thought about returning unused dog food to the store and giving the rest away.
I took the numbered tag she had worn for a decade, put it on a string, and put it around my neck.
I did the dishes.
Without changing clothes or washing my hair, I headed out on foot, aware I was bedraggled. Maybe I could walk some of the angst off. Oh no, I would never be pulling her down the bumpy street in her carrier or have her leash in my hand with her on the other end. I would never have reason to sit in the grass at a park to be beside her sleeping. I thought I wanted to go get drunk. I rarely drink but in this case maybe drunk would be better.
A friend had given me a gift certificate at Christmas for a certain restaurant that features a micro brewery. I had used part of it months ago but the fact is, I hate beer. The beef burger slider I had was real good and I'd had a glass of wine but it was dull wine, not the type that leaps with life and makes one giddy.
I had met a lot of people with my dog. You could say we were known. I walked along wondering who I might see, who I might tell. It turned out quite a few. Many had a dog death in their own history, most knew to say they were sorry, some actually looked sad or distressed for me.
I got to the restaurant thinking their happy hour started at one, but it turned out to be at two. So I walked around and into some stores, knowing I wasn't going to buy anything, basically loitering. I picked up free magazines and papers and skimmed them. When I saw someone coming with their dog, I told them mine had died the day before. I judged their old dogs as more lively than mine had been at the same age.
When I got back to the restaurant at two the waitress came up to me and handed me a $20 bill. She said, "Someone who was dining here overheard you, and said to order whatever you want."
"Really? How sweet! Are they here now?"
"No they left. They also asked me if you were a regular here, are you?"
"No, I have a friend who gave me a gift certificate at Christmas and I've only been here once before. She is real picky about food and prides herself on knowing restaurants." (I blabbed my friend's name.)
"So you follow her lead?"
"Yes."
"I told them you were just real stressed out because your dog had just died."
(Maybe they had overheard me ask her an hour earlier if they still had happy hour and that I wanted a drink?")
I ordered chili, a hot dog, fries, and though there were tempting alcohol creations on the menu, a glass of that dead house wine, which, with my lack of sleep, probably served as to push me closer to it. It was all good, but the stranger's unexpected generosity did not prevent me from being in shock at the total bill with tip. $7 for a plain hot dog? Noone had asked me if I might like some onions or relish? How could I spend like this? What was left was about $6, I guess that paid for the plastic bags I bought. OK. Alright. Play it forward.
I sat far from groups of diners and was mostly ignored by the waitress and her helpers. No napkins either. But that was OK, because I was thinking of my dog, still shedding tears, and talking to myself or her as well. People reminded me she had been on death row and I had given her a decade more of life.
I once heard talking to oneself is a writerly trait.
I heard my old friend Wes in my head, joking around.
Me: "I've been talking to myself."
Wes: "Must be a good conversation." Eyes twinkle.
There was one thing that made me smile and feel calmer as I sat out there in the morning cool with the tiny droplets of rain and the dismal sky and my dog in her white cardboard casket, sheeted with white plastic. And that was thinking of my friend, M. who had died years ago, during the first strange and scary rage of AIDS.
This was in the early stages of the epidemic when the disease was a mystery and before there were drug cocktails. The LA Weekly had a front page article at some point that was extensive about the latest theories which included transmission from monkeys to men.
M. had come to Los Angeles as a teenager, alone in this world. Things happened.
I had not terribly mourned his passing, nor was I without feeling. As it turned out, he hadn't complained enough for me to understand that he had been homeless and sick for a while. I find it somehow easier when a death is expected and I had been along on that ride with him, though there were some others too who stood by him. He had been unaware, until he was diagnosed, and had not been diagnosed until he experienced a drastic weight loss. When he died, science had gotten to the point where they knew he had a very early, very slow moving version of HIV, that had taken a decade at least to show up, while at that point some mutations could kill in six months.
Recently, I dined with the very same friend who had gifted me the Christmas gift certificate for the micro-brewery. She is not vaccinated for Covid and we had not seen each other in at least three years.
We met outdoors at the best Mexican restaurant in our vicinity, in her opinion, also expensive. Lately I suspect she got an inheritance.
I found myself telling her about M and not in the most eloquent way. I stopped and started and wound around the point, loosing my thoughts between eating a little this and a little that. I'd told her the story that basically ended with M. having proven to be the very model of forgiveness, though he was not at all religious.
She said, "Well good for him!"
I said, "I could not have."
She said that M.'s story, of his mother and a sister taking a charity up on two tickets to LA to see him as he lay dying, and then using their time here to sight-see and even go disco dancing, and then absconding to leave him there to die without them at Christmas, was something that was in a film she had seen.
He had not wanted me to visit because I was taking classes and people were coughing in my classes. After a bout in intensive care and isolation room hospitalization in which I, as a visitor, had to mask-up so as to not infect him, he was down to 12 T cells and anyone with a cold could have hastened his death.
However, after hearing his mom and sister had gone, I insisted that I would come for Christmas, and had made the lasagna that he said he wanted to eat to take with me. Instead I got a call early in the morning that he had died in the middle of the night.
But suddenly as I sat with my dog's coffin waiting for the body pick up man. I was thinking of M., him smiling, looking healthy and in a light tweedy summer suit. I said to whomever was listening, "M, would you take care of my dog on the other side? I think you would do a good job of it." And I had an image of my dog smiling too. I only worried that when I got there he might not want to give her back. The idea of M taking care of my dog cheered me immensely. I thought it could be a good win-win situation.
I'm having difficulty adjusting. I'm on a computer and I think "She must be sleeping, she's so quiet." And then I think, "No, she's dead." Or I find myself thinking "I better go home and feed her," and I realize no need to. I realize that for a decade she was always on my mind and that I did live my life around her, and she lived her life around me.
And that buddy dog who sniffed towards her as she lay there in that box waiting for the body pick up has been coming around, looking for treats, sitting in the space where they would both sit, waiting a while.
C 2022 Christine Trzyna
Back in the day.
Before diagnostic psychobabble became part of talk. Before you became wary of saying you were feeling "blue." When the blues were best treated by listening to the blues.
Before consciousness included realization that your best friend suffered their thinking.
A delight with morning dew and sunlight spun in the rose bush between thorns and bud.
Me - the fly who realized and wiggled loose.
That day when his friend who knew him since high school dismissed your concerns about his pain by saying, "But - don't you know?! He's just really really really neurotic!"
That day you just got a clue.
She had a decade on you.
Sentimental with childhood, no one told you.
Where exactly is that point where really really really neurotic and mentally ill meet? When the day you realized you lost a friend along the way?
When saying someone was "crazy" was said with a smile, a laugh, even a hold-your-belly because it was meant as a compliment. When "crazy" was "genius" and innovation. When you respected unique individuals. No one was on trial for "culture appropriation" either. So what if they wanted to do something with their hair?! It was their hair. Crazy, man!
But, now you know more. Too much. Some would say better. Now you can use words like narcissistic personality disorder, self-harming, or clinically depressed with knowing and sadly, abandon.
He lived all those labels and more. As the years went by he got really really really really really neurotic.
He tore himself up on a nightly basis. He spent hours looking in mirrors. He went into a zone while stretching his legs before a run. Where are you? Come back! Come back!
He was always running late and drove like a hellion, even the blind curves through the canyon. Scared the hell out of you a few times.
Had to chase young girls. Really young girls. Really really young girls... Sunset Strip. Told them he was a music producer. Leaned into his dream of being a Rock Star. He passed on first and second look. Told too young girls who could believe their eyes... Went home alone to dismantle.
Did not see his aging.
Women as props.
Women as compensation.
//
Being around these people makes you sick too, so you make your escape. That's what you do. You're afraid their mental illness is a contamination. Cooties. Associating with that person means something about you - you mean girl.
How did you acquire all the clutter of mentally ill friends? Do you hoard mentally ill friends? Remember when you thought you were loyal and faithful rather than an enabler?
//
Went to visit his parents. His mother you always liked. Tears springing from her eyes as she said, "I hope it's not mental illness."
"I think it is," you said, quietly but sure.
Obsessive-Compulsive. Self hater. Something at the core.
C 2021 Christine Trzyna
Note: The last couple days living through history; The siege of the United States Capitol to disrupt the political process of confirming Joseph Biden as the next President, the fervent discussion of President Donald Trump's mental health, and the effect of the Covid-19 plague and economic disrepair, has me thinking about mental illness. In discussion with a friend, we agreed that we don't think of depression as mental illness. It is most often common and appropriate. There is a great deal of pain to process and a Dark Night of the Soul can be Spirituality Enlightening. We don't think a mere six weeks of feeling blue should lead to medication. We do think self harm and suicidal thoughts should require a psychiatric consultation. In this series of free writing I'm exploring mental illness and friendship.
